All great power has to do to destroy itself is persist in trying to do the impossible.

When you close your eyes to tragedy, you close your eyes to greatness.

Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it.

We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them.

Thou shalt not let a day pass without rereading something great.

As a rule, the most dangerous ideas are not the ones that divide people but those on which they agree.

Like all wage slaves, he had two crosses to bear: the people he worked for and the people he worked with

To state a lie firmly, categorically and with great authority, undeterred by the fact that all concerned know it to be a lie, is one of the principal activities defined by the term practising law.

Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not.

Is it possible that I am not alone in believing that in the dispute between Galileo and the Church, the Church was right and the centre of man's universe is the earth?

The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person's name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.

Believe that you are successful, dream it every day, soon you will find that you are successful.

History,' Mari muttered, as if she'd overheard his thoughts. 'Why do we need to know what happened before we were born?' 'So hopefully we get smarter and don't make the same mistakes again.

The whole function of cities has been transformed.

Study: 60% of young Americans plan to buy firearms. The other 40% were confused, saying they thought they were free under Obamacare.

When decisions on nuclear power stations and runways are delayed and the government dilly-dallies, people think they aren't important.

I shouldn't have named the chimps. It wasn't scientific. I didn't know. I knew nothing. And worse sin of all was that I was ascribing to them emotions like happiness, sadness and so forth.

names are a way to keep people in your mind

Cuvier had preceded Lamarck in specifying the kinds and degrees of variation, which his own observations and critical judgment of the reports of others led him to admit.

I always saw myself as a large stockholder trying to make a difference. I wasn't raiding anybody.

A lot of great fortunes in the world have been made by owning a single wonderful business. If you understand the business, you don't need to own very many of them.